


Jötunheimr — Part Two: Then

by aylithe



Series: Jötunheimr [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Dysphoria, Civil War, Emotionally Constipated Loki, Family Drama, Gore, Infidelity, Jötunn Loki, Loki Is Not A Runt, Multi, On Hiatus, Political Drama, Thor Is Not Stupid, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-18 11:20:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5926597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aylithe/pseuds/aylithe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two hundred years have passed since Loki was taken back by Jötunheimr, and the realm has since been in civil war. A war whose centre point lies on Loki’s very existence, and one that has no clear victor emerging. In Asgard, the realms receive a threat from the depths of the Void, and Allfather Odin sends Thor to investigate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prelude

_Then, the wolf’s jaws had closed tight. Then, brothers lived and died, and rose bitter from ashes again. For Then, hearts were made of steel. For Then, paths were walked._

_But Then, the worlds forgot. Then, a silence fell. Then, fire burst in the darkness, and blood painted the barren wastes of worlds._

_That was the Then._

_The Now lies forth._


	2. Chapter One - The Outcast Lands

The wind hissed through the arches and gorges of the Skógarmaðrfit. It rattled the icicles, their chimes echoed a thousandfold by the deep ravines and unforgiving rock. The snow whipped into the air made for poor visibility, and the cold was enough to make the teeth ache for those not made for the climate.

So when Loki breathed in deeply, he had little problem with the temperature.

The air was cleaner, the smells sharper atop the jagged spire of ice he was sitting on. The scent of the party they were hunting was in the wind. They were close, he thought.

Loki had long become used to the heightened sensitivity of his jötunn body. He’d had nearly two hundred years to adjust, after all, and there was some part of him that fervently wondered how he could have lived before with the dull senses of the Æsir. It wasn’t the only thing that had changed over the centuries. “You must play the long game,” Fárbauti had said to him in his first year here, and Loki had to the point of physical, and near-mental, entrenchment.

He’d left his adornments, the armlets and rings, the gold bands for his horns and pectoral necklace befitting his station as prince, in Útgarðar, and the revealed skin was scarred from years of fighting and war. He instead wore his armour near every night now, for show if not for practical use — the jötnar as a people held ideal in the presentation of strength. This set was tougher, his battle-wear that had seen hard use. Made of black _stjarna-járn_ — star-iron — it was sturdier and thicker than ceremonial steel. Since it cast no reflection, it was perfect for an operation of stealth like this.

But it was all Loki looked typically jötunn. He stubbornly, even foolishly, refused to comply to everything. He still held small rebellions; Sigyn called them his _quirks_. He’d shaved only the sides of his head to the skin, and what tangled and twisted hair still grew on his head was long enough to touch the centre of his back. It was tied through with plaits, leather cords, silver thread, beads of bone, and shards of shining runic stones. He took pains to heal his wounds so they wouldn’t badly scar, as was the jötunn fashion. He still used some of his Æsir weapons — good uru was far better than enchanted ice, he found when the originals had been melted down and recast to account for his new height. He had also recycled the scale mail from the Æsir-made armour Thor had brought for him when he had tried to take Loki back to Asgard. It patterned his thighs, covering the gaps in his studded _kjilt_. He was a thrice-be-damned idiot for it, and often cursed himself, but he couldn’t make himself take those final few steps to rid himself of Asgard. He was a masochist in that sense.

 _Fool_ , his mind hissed at him for the stray thought. He hissed wordlessly at it in return.

The tokens in his hair clinked as he stirred, rolling his shoulders and taking another deep breath. He flexed his shifting muscles a little, heightening his senses to an even greater degree to better pinpoint the party. He took one last breath, his eyes flickering beneath their lids. His claws clicked on the ice.

“The idiots should have at least tried to stay down wind,” Loki said idly to the air.

“Highness?” someone asked from below.

Loki opened his eyes and stood in a smooth motion before picking his way down the spire. Nodding to the south, he said, “They’re that way.”

The jötnar with him were the loyalist of the warriors he had gathered around him during his time here. He had more, twelve in his close-kept faction, the ones he trusted the most. In all truth, _was least wary of_ would have been a better description. Many of them he didn’t trust a stone’s throw.

It was Hval who’d spoken to him, so Loki turned his gaze on the boy. He was the youngest of the group, barely past a thousand and fifty years. He looked like his sister, Skaði. The resemblance was obvious when he stood next to her as he did now. He might not have been as tall or as bulky as her, but he’d earnt his keep through other means.

“You sound apprehensive,” Loki said.

“I’m not,” Hval replied, squaring his shoulders.

Loki snorted. “Don’t lie; it’s five of us against a dozen of Þrymheimr’s highest elite.” Apart from Hval and Skaði, two others had accompanied Loki for this raid: Rangbein, the son of one of Laufey’s high lords and one of the better fighters in Loki’s faction, and Sigyn. Loki’s eyes met hers then. Their usual softness had been replaced by a steely determination tonight. Looking at her in that moment though, an unease crept through Loki’s heart.

_Do not worry for her, you misogynist. Those Asgardians sensibilities will ruin you. You were so good at pushing aside your emotions before. Why not now?_

Loki scowled, clenching his fist.

“I’m not apprehensive. We have you on our side, Highness,” Hval said, oblivious to Loki’s thoughts.

Loki shook himself. “I’m not always a sure winning piece,” he said. “Remember that, Hval.”

He rolled his shoulders and turned his attention back to the wider group. “We’re a long way up, and riding káshta here is too difficult for most to achieve. Þrymheimr has brokered a deal with the local warlord to provide mounts for this party beyond the Rib. They have a kilometre to transverse on foot. There’s fifteen of them, sixteen if you count our target, a Lord Ver Bakraufson. Shouldn’t be hard to spot amongst the guard — apparently, he has a distinctive appearance. I’ll provide the initial distraction before Rangbein and Sigyn will engage the tail. Hval, break their left, Skaði, their right. Make sure they can’t make for the Rib; if they get through there, we’ll lose them.”

“Then remind me again why you didn’t bring more if you’re so concerned about them escaping?” Skaði asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Loki ignored her. “They’ll be here soon. We won’t have the element of surprise for long, so be quick and accurate in your strikes. If you feel overwhelmed, make space for yourself.”

“You must think us children, my prince, to lecture us so,” Skaði said dryly.

“Remind me again why I keep you around?” Loki threw back at her, clipped.

“Because you like looking at my arse, Highness.”

“Just get over there, Sister,” Hval said, glaring at Skaði from under his brows.

Loki was content to let Hval deal with Skaði. Truth be told, he didn’t like Skaði much, what with her general attitude and talkback, but she was useful, loyal, vicious in a fight. He turned his back on her, smoothing the snow of their footprints as the group parted ways.

“I don’t, you know,” Loki said quietly to Sigyn as the others left.

Sigyn rolled her eyes. She was as different to Skaði as it was possible to be. Where Skaði was haughty with a personality as icy as the climate, Sigyn was humble and open, gentle where Skaði was harsh edges. Like many of the warriors in the war, she’d cut her hair. It was barely enough for Loki to run his fingers through, but that was the point of the length — hair provided a handhold for the enemy.

“I know that,” she said. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“I wanted to tell you.” Loki leant close to her, stealing a kiss before he said, “Be safe, love.”

“If you will be,” she replied.

“I swear I will.”

“I’m holding you to it.” Sigyn’s fingers trailed down his inner arm as she stepped away, following after Rangbein. Loki caught Rangbein’s eye.

 _Keep her safe._ There was a reason he’d paired Sigyn with someone.

They went in their separate directions to their hiding spots, and Loki wove a net of magic over the ground, erasing their tracks from existence. He then hid near the second exit to the gorge they stood in. It was a crack in an otherwise smooth plateau, two hundred metres long and barely thirty wide. The foot of the gorge was peppered with divots big enough to hide in, and the fallen debris plentiful enough to conceal them at first glance. Loki wove spells over the others to finish hiding them.

The debris meant that the remaining space upon which the Þrymheimr party could easily walk was only enough for four people abreast. They were to emerge from one end of the gorge and disappear through the other, and therefore into a mess of ice and rock no one but those who’d grown up in the area could navigate. Loki had already killed the scout sent by the warlord to meet the Þrymheimr group; they’d stuffed his body in an alcove he doubted they’d be able to find again.

Minutes passed. Loki, hiding near the second exit to the gorge, eased a cramp from his calf. His breathing was loud in his ears. Ten minutes … twenty minutes …

The wind held in their favour, covering their scents when the Þrymheimr party finally came into view. As Loki had said, there were sixteen of them. The first few guards lifted their spears as they came into the area, every muscle coiled as tight as springs. Loki couldn’t fault them — the Skógarmaðrfit may have been a maze, and routes from one side to the other changed every few nights for safety, but it hardly meant anything. Anyone who knew the landscape well enough, or who was determined enough to hunt down enemy spies within the mountains and valleys, could catch their prey in here. It provided the perfect place for an ambush. Even so, he crouched lower, hardly daring to breathe. He double-checked the enchantments hiding anything him or the others may have overlooked.

“Dead land,” one of the guard grunted.

“Any signs of birds? Animals?” another asked a third guard.

She stilled, scanning the rocks. Loki tightened his magic. He tapped into his shifting abilities, focusing his eyesight. The she-jötunn’s pupils were huge, too much so for the low light to be solely responsible. She was a shifter too, then. The guards surrounding the Þrymheimr party were tense throughout her examination, and Loki pressed himself back against an outcrop, tense.

“The skies are clear,” the she-jötunn said finally. Loki let go of a breath of half a heartbeat before she continued, “But … there’s a hint of an enchantment here. Somewhere.”

“Útgarðar scum?”

“Knowing the slime,” said a guard with a captain’s insignia on his left shoulder plate — three diagonal slashes facing the right, “most likely.”

_Norns dammit._

Loki stood, closing his eyes briefly before stepping out from behind his rock. He shifted mid-step. It came to him as easy as breathing now, moulding his flesh into something else. Before, he had been trying to cram himself into a new body, forcing himself to become something he wasn’t. Shifting didn’t work like that. It was about being liquid, about calming the mind and falling away, flexing his magic and coaxing forth the form he wished like a potter shaping clay.

When his foot came down, he stood in a smaller body. He was a child, perhaps four centuries of age. He took inspiration from Býleistr and scarred a side of his face, casting an illusion over one eye to make a patch. His hair was a bird’s nest of tangles to his stomach. His horns were gone, as were his heritage lines. It marked him a bastard. The Skógarmaðrfit was home to thousands of those like this fictional child, cast out in shame by the families who bore or sired unwanted or malformed offspring. The children these bastards had were as damned as their parents. They were never granted heritage lines, and therefore never granted family. And in Jötunheimr where strength and family were prized above anything else, it was a condemnation to misery.

The Þrymheimr loyal bunched closer together, blocking the target from view.

“Grimmur sjálfur,” Loki whispered, looking at them through his hair.

“Who are you?” the captain snarled.

“No one. My dam told me that every night before she left me here.”

“That taint of magic, is it yours?” the shifter asked, her eyes flat.

“I can make sparks,” Loki said in a small voice. “I was playing.”

“And you are alone?”

“For seventy-eight years, my lady. Jerkanar-Lord won’t let me have any of his food. He took my eye when I tried.”

“If you value your wretched life, no one,” the captain said, “you will stand before me. Now.”

Loki stumbled forward, crossing the space slowly until he stood just out of arm’s reach from the captain.

“Where do your loyalties lie?” the captain asked. “Who is your sovereign?”

Loki made a show of gulping. “I …” He knew that whatever he said, the captain planned on killing him. Bastard children were liabilities, their loyalty determined in the heat of a moment depending on who was being kinder. Both Útgarðar and Þrymrheimr as well as their allies in the war had used bastards before as spies. Besides, Loki knew in the back of his mind the captain thought that killing him would be a kindness in the long run. Bastards were little better than beasts.

After weighing his options, he said, “Hroar-Queen.”

It would grant him a kinder death. A quick one delivered by a blade to the throat, perhaps, or one to the heart.

“Jerkanar-Lord, he is a gang leader?” the captain said after a few moments silence. As if he didn’t already know. Loki nodded. “It is unfortunate that he’s treated you with such unkindness. I can give you something to eat, little one, if that would please you.”

Loki nodded enthusiastically this time.

“I have food,” the captain said. He beckoned a warrior to him, reaching into the pack on his back and pulling out a square of wrapped food. “Here.”

Loki inched his foot closer, and then, after a few hesitant steps, scuttled within arm’s reach of the captain. He took the packet from the jötunn, unwrapping the leather to reveal a fresh cut of meat. He sat, tearing into it as if he were starving. The captain moved up behind him, and Loki felt rather than heard the ice forming in his hand.

But before he could bring the blade down, Loki whirled, summoning his own icy knife and stabbing the captain in the knee. The captain howled as Loki formed another blade and buried it in his chest before he had time to topple, throwing up a shield as the guards threw ice darts at him. They shattered on impact with the shield, the shrapnel embedding itself into the captain’s flesh.

“Niðingr! _Niðingr!_ ” the shifter screamed, and Loki turned to her, eyes blazing. He crouched, launching himself at her as he shifted. He became himself again, slamming his horns into her nose as he tackled her to the ground. She spat at him as her hand alit with magic. Loki battered her attack aside with his own magic as his faction burst from their hiding places, engaging the Þrymheimr loyal.

As he fought the she-jötunn, Loki caught glimpses of the others’ fights. Skaði stabbed two of them in quick succession, bending back to avoid a sword swipe. Rangbein was engaged in a fight with one of the other guards, their ice swords clanging again and again. One of the guard darted for Sigyn, seeing her double lines as an easy kill. Loki’s heart jumped into his throat, and he snarled, pushing the she-jötunn away. He took two of his uru knives from the negative space and threw them at the jötunn advancing behind Sigyn’s back. Both of them sunk deep into his chest, and the force of it was enough to throw him back a few feet, the blades buried to the handles. He barely had enough time to ascertain she was alright before the she-jötunn attacked him again.

She grabbed for his horns, and Loki twisted aside with practiced ease. He rammed an elbow into her back, pushing at her face with his other hand as she tried to swing around to face him. Loki clawed at her face, briefly reminding himself of another fight nearly two centuries ago in which a different she-jötunn’s face had been torn to ribbons for him. He growled as she lashed out at him in her pain, the claws screeching against his armour.

As Loki aimed a killing blow at her, she crawled back, shifting at the same moment into a valravn. With a wingspan of nearly five metres, it was a terrifying beast to face. Oil black and with diamond-cutting talons, it was all Loki could do to scramble out of her way as it jabbed at him. He crouched, lip curled. His skin rippled with ice beneath his armour, and an uru knife slipped into his hand.

“Call me _niðingr_ again,” he breathed. “I dare you.”

The valravn screamed, wings outstretched as it lunged for him. Loki rolled out of the way, standing up right and jumping high. He landed on the bird’s back, digging his claws into the lush black feathers as it bucked and writhed, trying to get him off. It struck at him with its beak, and Loki stabbed the knife through the top of the skull. The valravn slumped like a puppet cut of its strings. Another jötunn tried to engage Loki in a fight, but Loki simply sighed before he punched him in the face. He realised only then that he had a gash on the back of his thigh, the chainmail links of his _kjilt_ rattling loosely.

But by then, the skirmish was over. Hval rounded up those who ran, picking them off with well-thrown shards of razor sharp ice. Loki barely paid it a flick of attention, instead focused on the single jötunn who hadn’t fought, cowering at the nearest wall of the gorge. His appearance was distinctive, just as the spies had promised. He was the only one of the Þrymheimr party that had hair, and was one of the shortest. He was a weedy individual, as if he’d missed several meals in his early years. The armour he wore, although fine, didn’t properly fit him — plates scraped against each other in places they weren’t meant to, and he seemed to be swamped by it.

He froze under Loki’s gaze, then turned and ran. Loki sprinted after him, ignoring the stabbing pain in his leg and panting for breath as the jötunn raced for the exit leading to the Rib. If he disappeared in there, Loki would be hard-pressed to find him. Loki’s armour and wound were slowing him down, and he snarled to himself. He shot an ice dart at the jötunn, swearing when he missed.

_Shift, fool!_

Rage ripped through him at the command, but he shifted, this time into a white direwolf. He closed the distance easily then, leaping on the jötunn’s back. He was careful to just knock him to the ground, shifting back during the time the jötunn took to stand again. He kicked him down, pushing his foot into the hollow of his throat. The air crackled around him.

“Lord Ver Bakraufson,” he said.

The jötunn glared at him, and Loki looked him up and down. As he’d first suspected, Ver Bakraufson wasn’t a warrior. His hair hung to his shoulder blades, and his body held little scar tissue, almost none at all; Loki was fairly sure that was due to lack of combat rather than any skill at it.

“I’ll take your silence as confirmation to your identity,” Loki said. He gestured to the carnage some distance behind him. “Well, as your retinue is dead and the worst we’ve suffered is …” He looked around at his group as they came up behind him. “… a few minor slices, I’d say we’ve captured you fair enough.”

“You speak Jötunn as a second language,” Ver said beneath him. “The accent is a remarkable imitation, I will admit, as is your use of proper diction, but there is … something decidedly false about it — the over-pronunciation of the words…. You are Loki.”

Loki felt like snarling, but he forced himself to keep his temper in check. Besides, Hval, spattered from head to toe with blood, snarled for him. “He is _Prince_ Loki Laufeyson, second son of Laufey-King, and he is more jötunn than your traitorous blood ever was.”

“Peace,” Loki ground out. He dug his foot further into Ver’s throat. “If he values his hide, he won’t be so foolish as to speak of me like that again, _especially_ where I can hear it.” A shock of magic ran through him, and Ver yelped. “Bind him,” Loki said, stepping off Ver’s throat. “I wouldn’t want Warlord Jerkanar waiting any longer than he must, either.” He stalked back to the carnage as Skaði yanked Ver upright, restraining his arms behind his back and sealing his mouth shut with her ice.

Loki found the captain’s body easily enough, and he grunted, kneeling on his head and shoulders. “Well,” he muttered to him, “unluckily for you, I’m petty.”

* * *

#

* * *

He alighted on an outcropping a few minutes later, shifting from his bird form. The captain’s head lay at his feet. The severing of it had been messily done — cutting heads off was something surprisingly hard and incredibly untidy — and Loki had to put his foot on it to stop it rolling away. It was foggier lower down, and he could barely make out the shapes of the waiting jötnar beneath him. He drew himself up to his full height, the head in hand, and padded forward. He bent the light around his horns, hiding them temporarily from view.

“Ah, Uratr,” one of the jötnar said. He was nothing more than a shape in the fog, stepping forward from the káshta he was leaning against. “Took your time.”

Loki said nothing.

“Get the Þrymheimr people here. We need to leave.”

Loki let go of the spell around his horns, and he couldn’t help but smirk when the jötunn froze in his tracks. Only three people had horns like his in Jötunheimr — himself, his brother Býleistr, and the king, Laufey. They were huge, solid silver-black bone sweeping in a graceful arc over his head. Resent them he might, Loki couldn’t help but agree that they were sometimes useful for more than giving him a neck-ache.

He rolled the captain’s head through the fog, and the jötunn spat in surprise as it came to rest at his feet. Then Loki turned away, quickly losing the party to the fog. He shifted into a valravn himself and took off before the jötnar below him could follow.

It was a short flight in all, and soon Loki had spotted the camp Skaði and Rangbein had made. He landed in the centre of it, shifting back to his jötunn form. He was exhausted, and merely sat where he’d landed, leaning back on his elbows and looking at the sky.

“We’re moving out in a half hour,” he said to the faction as they gathered around him. “Don’t bother hiding our presence.”

“Then use the time to clean the blood off yourself,” Skaði said in a dry voice.

Loki grabbed a handful of snow and rubbed it in his face in an effort to wake himself up. But it was only wet and unpleasant — he had a tendency at times to forget he couldn’t feel the cold as he had done in his Æsir skin.

 _Fool_ , his mind said. _Fool. You are_ jötunn _._

“Shut up, Hveðrungr,” Loki whispered, rubbing the heel of his palm into his eye. “Shut up.”

Sigyn gave him a quizzical look from where she crouched by Ver. Loki shook his head minutely. “I’m fine,” he said. “Just tired.”

_Liar. As long as you listen to me, you’ll never be fine._


	3. Chapter Two - Thor

Thor was woken by a hand tugging at his hair rather painfully. “Papa, Papa, there’s a man at the door.”

“Tell him to come back in five minutes,” Thor grunted. “Papa’s sleeping.”

“But he says Grandpapa wants you.”

Thor groaned into his pillow. “Time,” he said, and when the holo-projection announced it to be five and a half bells since midnight, Thor resigned himself to getting up. Thrúdr’s fingers could barely wrap around his wrist as she tugged on it in the effort to pull him out of bed. Thor let his daughter drag him upright. “You’re getting stronger every day,” he said, feigning surprise.

“Then I’m gonna be stronger than you one day,” she said primly.

“I’m certain you will be, baby.”

“I’m not a baby! I’m a hundred and ninety-four!”

“You’ll always be my baby.”

“Mama! Papa’s being mean again!”

“Stop being mean to her,” Sif sighed from the other side of the mattress. “She’ll rip your arms off with that fearsome strength of hers.”

“Yes!” Thrúdr shouted. “Yes I will!”

“Sweet Norns spare me the wrath of my daughter,” Thor said, exaggerating a shudder. He washed the night’s sweat away with water from the pitcher and shucked on a fresh set of clothes as Sif got up, humming idly at Thrúdr’s talk.

“Tiger snuck off last night, and Jaja and I had to go and find him. But Maistresse Leiva had put him on the top of the drawers, so me and Jaja had to pull them all out so they were like stairs and climb up. Jaja got really scared, so I had to climb up with my hand over her eyes.”

“And did you get Tiger down safely?”

“Mhmm. I told Maistresse Leiva that it was mean of her to put Tiger where she did because he hates being by himself. Can you tell her off, Mama?”

“I’ll have a word with her.”

Thor shook his hair out from under the shirt collar, and when he was putting on the lightweight leather armour he wore around Valaskjalf, Thrúdr hugged his leg. “It was really mean of Maistresse Leiva to do that, wasn’t it?”

“Do what, sweetheart?” Thor murmured absently as he did the buckles up.

Thrúdr bit her lip. “She said … she said she put Tiger on the drawers because I’d left him lying on the floor, and if she had left him there like I did, in a place where it would make the room messy, the frost giants would have taken him and eaten him because they’d think he was unwanted.”

Thor pulled in a sharp breath. “Thrúdr,” he said, crouching down to her and brushing her hair out of her face. She had his gold hair, and Sif’s ringlets. She had her eyes, too, and Thor fixed his own on them as he said firmly, “What has Maistresse Leiva said about the frost giants?”

“That they’re big and mean and smelly and stupid. And that they killed Uncle Loki before I was born.”

Monstrous, yes, but when Loki was lumped into the description…. “That’s not true, beloved,” Thor said. “It … it was accident that led to Loki’s death.” Then, because he supposed he should: “You don’t believe what she said about the jötnar, do you?”

“Everyone else says it, though,” Thrúdr whispered. Her eyes were wide, and her bottom lip trembled. She was scared, Thor realised. She knew that she had somehow upset him.

“Thrúdr, sweetheart,” Thor said, pulling her into a tight embrace, “I want you to know that the jötnar aren’t what the others say they are. What they’ve only heard are stories left over from the war Grandpapa fought. But I’ve met frost giants. Some of them are brave and far cleverer than I am. What Maistresse Leiva and whatever else other people tell you about the frost giants isn’t true, and I want you to promise me that you’ll never believe what they say. Alright?”

“I promise, Papa,” Thrúdr said in a small voice.

“That’s my girl.” He kissed her forehead, stroking a thumb down her cheek. He’d said every word with Loki in mind. Because Loki was his brother, and nothing would change that. “I need to go and talk with Grandpapa now.”

“Can I come?”

“This is grown-up business,” Thor said gently. “I’m sure it’ll be the most boring meeting I’ve ever been to.”

“I can tell you about Tiger and Jaja so you won’t be bored.”

“I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that, baby.”

“‘M not a baby….”

“Of course not; how silly of me.” He looked back over his shoulder to Sif, who rolled her eyes and came over.

“Come on,” she said to Thrúdr, picking her up under her armpits and nuzzling her cheek with her nose. “Let’s go and tell Maistresse Leiva off together.”

“Mhmm.”

“You play Father sometimes,” Sif said to Thor out of the corner of her mouth. “I’m not cut out for the roll of domestic mother.”

“You’re doing an admirable job, which is why I keep giving it to you.”

“Thor, I’d be insulted if she wasn’t my flesh and blood. In fact, I’ve decided I am insulted.”

“I apologise, my lady.”

“Good to hear it. You can show your sincerity by being on nappy duty for the next week.”

“She’s not out of those …?”

“Not at night, no.”

“Norns, I’m terrible at this.”

“And you have centuries of practice to get better. And you know as well as I that you’re a hands on learner. So, nappy duty, starting tonight.”

“Mama, we need to go,” Thrúdr said, tugging on Sif’s hair. “Papa needs to see Grandpapa.”

“Aye, that he does.”

“What do they talk about?”

“How to be the king, my love. Like you’ll be trained how to be the queen one day.”

“Hmm, alright. Bye, Papa,” Thrúdr said, waving as Thor left his and Sif’s bedchambers. Thor smiled and waved at her and Sif in turn, then sighed when he saw the errand boy waiting for him in the atrium.

“Highness,” the boy said, bowing before him, “the Allfather is by the Yggdrasil.”

“You’re dismissed,” Thor said, nodding his thanks.

The boy bowed again. “My prince.”

Thor strode past him, yawning as he made his way through Valaskjalf. He wondered absently why his father was by the Yggdrasil projection. He was usually summoned to the War Chamber or Odin’s private study.

The sky had lightened considerably by the time he arrived, knocking to announce himself before striding through the gold embossed doors. The room was circular, the ceiling stretching away to seemingly the stars to make way for the domineering holo-projection of Yggdrasil. The realms glistened in the Tree’s branches, the leaves swaying in a ceaseless breeze. Stars shone on the branches, galaxies too, but Thor’s eyes strayed past those. They went to Jötunheimr. As it had been for the past two hundred years, the realm was covered in storm clouds. Thor wasn’t surprised, but he dearly wished the war to be done with.

 _Loki’s dead_ , some part of him whispered.  _He’s dead._

“Father,” Thor said, kneeling before Odin.

Odin stood next to the dais on which Yggdrasil grew, Gungnir in hand. Thor’s brow furrowed at the full regalia his father wore. He wracked his memories for the schedule today. He didn’t have any official audiences with ambassadors, nor with the Assembly or the public. Today he was to conducts matters of the realms within smaller circles that Odin could have attended in far more casual dress.

He wasn’t alone either. The Elder Council stood behind him, a group of eight men that handled the various needs of Asgard not directly dealt with by Odin, and they inclined their heads to Thor when he entered. Thor gave a curt nod of acknowledgement, then turned his full attention to his father.

“What has happened?” Thor asked him. “There has been an emergency of some kind, no?”

“There has been,” Odin said. There was a weariness to his voice, and when Thor really  _looked_  at him, he saw a haggardness in Odin’s face.

Odin waved a hand, and one of the realms grew in size. Nidavellir.

“What is …?”

“That?” All in all, Nidavellir was a small realm. Races who were hardly on the best of terms with the dwarfs called it nothing more than a glorified asteroid. And dominating the Nidavellir skies was a gargantuan ship. It was inherently ugly to look upon, as if it had been pieced together from the scrap of several other large cruisers that had collided. The metal of its hulls was dark and twisted, but the aerodynamic shape of it told it was more than it seemed. But there was something strange about the way it hung in the space …

Odin turned his head back to the council. “Councilman Seaxnéat. If you would.”

“My king.” Seaxnéat turned to Thor. “The suspicions at the moment is that it’s damaged,” he said. “Nidavellir sent out communications to it early this morning by our clocks, and there’s been no response. A raid is being planned as we speak, and is to take place within the next few minutes if communications are still unanswered.”

“Has the ship been scanned?”

“Aye, and no one’s seen anything like it in living memory. But we do have records of craft boasting similar methods of circuit engineering from the reign of Búri.”

Thor started. “Norns,  _Búri_?”

“Aye. As best the dwarfs can tell, the ship is relatively new — a hundred years or so old. We’re currently waiting on their report.”

“Do we know what the ship logs say?” Thor asked. “Has the signal carrying them been retrieved?”

“It has been,” another of the council, Kvasir, said, “but the language they are recorded in … It is an ancient one. Unheard for so long in these realms few speak it. Linguists have been contacted to provide translation. For  _this_  is what the problem is.”

A garish sound echoed through the room, and whilst Thor could hear words, they were utterly incomprehensible to his ear. He was barely sure where words started and ended.

“Hence we’ve no translation as of yet,” Odin concluded.

“It’s repeated,” Thor realised. “The words … they’re on a loop.”

Odin cocked his head to the side, listening to the sounds over and over. Then he nodded after a few moments. “You’re right,” he said. He cast his eye to the clerk, and he scribbled it down.

“Allfather,” a voice said, thick with a guttural accent.

The alien words were turned off, and the projection of the ship was replaced instead with an image of a dwarf. They were by no means handsome to Æsir eyes. Their arms were long, the knuckles heavy, their greyish skin covered with dark hair. The eyes were small in the face, the nose and mouth too large. The dwarf’s beard, though, had been elaborately decorated. The length of it, as it had been looped up and around several times to keep it trailing on the floor of a grimy military ship, spoke of a high rank.

“Milord Allfather,” the dwarf said, inclining his head. “Lord Thor. Council.”

“Master Hrukkr,” Odin replied. “Any change?”

“Nay. We’ve sent out one more warning, and we’ve only gotten silence back. The boys are about to board.”

“We’ll be watching.”

The dwarf’s ship juddered as it docked, and Thor and the council were still as the sound of a saw’s blade shrieked. It bit quick and fast, and once a hole had been made, the dwarfs lunged through. The length of their arms gave them the ability for huge bursts of speed, acting as crutches they could race upon when pushed. The rust-coloured armour they wore was jammed with weapon, small enough they could be pressed flat against the body of the armour and their mechanics fine enough they could be drawn with a mere thought.

The first two of the party flung forth magnetic discs that stuck to the ship, and the energy wrecking pulse they released would have been enough to disable any kind of sufficiently advanced system for at least a half hour. And with that, they advanced.

Within the strange ship, darkness reigned. The barest flickers of light could be seen, and the contrast of the holo-project had to be raised for Odin and Thor to better see — since the dwarfs lived in near-blackness most of their lives, they had little need of an aiding light. Indeed, not even the ship’s emergency lights had flickered to life.

“Corridor 756B clear,” a voice whispered hoarsely.

“Corridor 756A likewise.”

“Corridor 729 similar.”

Thor could barely turn his eyes away as the ship was searched meticulously by the dwarfs. Other than the occasion whisper of a voice, their passage was silent. A few more times, the negating discs were employed, but when nothing stirred after the fourth time, Thor grew a little more relaxed. When they reached the bridge, he was certain the ship was abandoned.

When he voiced this, Odin merely shook his head. “That is what the overly optimistic think,” he said. “Never assume so until every board has been stripped away and searched.”

“But look at the dust,” Thor protested. The bridge had at least an inch of the stuff coating every flat surface. “Even if the ship’s crew had been placed into hibernation, at least one would remain animated should something go awry.”

“And if the crew is of the foolhardy type?” Odin snorted. “Midgardians may be ignorant of us, but one of them had to most adequate saying — the only two infinites in this existence are the universe and stupidity of life.”

“That’s not the quote,” Thor was on the verge of muttering under his breath, but he was distracted when there was a noise on the dwarfs’ end.

“What was that?” the leader of the council, Forseti, asked.

“The ship’s completely shut down,” Hrukkr grunted. “The system’s unfamiliar, so we’ve had to bypass and hack into the mainframe.”

“Can you make anything of it?” Odin said.

“The tech’s advanced, but it’s strange. It gets the job done, I won’t fault it on that, but it does it through the lengthiest methods.” Hrukkr shrugged. “At first glance, I’d call the engineers idiots, but then there’s something we’ve never seen before tucked into the panel’s motherboard. Genius, but who the fuck uses wires anymore? Err, pardon me, Majesty.”

Odin waved it off.

Thor peered behind Hrukkr, and was hardly surprised that the other dwarfs who’d accompanied him had already torn the control panel apart. The bridge was scattered with a mess of wiring and energy cells.

“Has it leant you any further leads on who the ship belongs to?” Odin asked, cutting Hrukkr’s grumbling off.

“I appreciate the pun, Majesty, but apart from Midgardr and a couple dozen far-flung planets just discovering you can make electric sparks, we’ve got no idea. The wires are probably our best chance at identifying this.”

“You reported before that there’s circuiting from Búri’s reign present,” Thor said, desperate. “So we’ve had contact with the society that’s built this ship before.”

“Highness, we are looking through the old records at the moment,” Hrukkr said. “We’ll report our findings when we’ve gotten our hands on them.” Hrukkr spat on the floor before he contacted Nidavellir’s surface, rattling off his findings in dwarfish.

“Rude as always,” Thor heard one of the council mutter behind him, but he couldn’t pin who’d said it.

He took a breath through his nose, frustrated. “So we’ve nothing,” Thor said, leaning his knuckles on Yggdrasil’s dais.

“It is worrying,” Kvasir mused, tugging at the end of his beard.

“We’ll discover who this people is soon, Highness,” Councilman Óthr said.

“Yes, if we don’t have to search through the most antique of databases first,” Councilman Vidar bit back. “Ones that still need to use loading screens, I’m sure.”

“Councilman, enough,” Odin said over his shoulder.

Vidar bowed low. “I apologise, Majesty. The lack of answers leads to a certain frustration within me.”

“One that we all share. Be sure to keep yours in check as the rest of us are doing.”

“Of course, Majesty.”

A beep from Hrukkr’s end, and a holo-projection appeared in his line of sight. His eyes flew over the words, and he grunted, waving the projection away. “They’ve found something,” he said. “The circuiting’s a bastardised desi—”

The ship shuddered, and the dwarfs sorting through the wiring lost their balances, falling from their crouched positions with several curses. Hrukkr barely managed to keep his feet, and he twisted to the front of the bridge, jabbing at one of the dwarfs and barking out an order. It was lost over the roar of the engines bursting into life.

Thor stared, and his fingers had a death-grip on the edge of the dais. “Lord Hrukkr?” he called.

“Ain’t a lord, Prince,” Hrukkr said. His hand had slipped to his belt, fingers running over a pair of shining hatchets. At his gesture, two dwarfs hurried to the bridge’s entrance. They pulled identical glaives from their belts, the shafts lengthening at a mere gesture. The heads crackled with electricity for a heartbeat before the noise was diluted with magic.

“There’s something moving,” one whispered. Thor strained his ears, but whatever noise the dwarf had heard hadn’t been picked up by the projection.

Every part of Thor’s body was tense to the point of discomfort, very nearly to pain. He still could hear nothing and so he had to rely on vision. It was insufficient, frustrating. The dwarfs seemed to be little better off than him. They were still, but Thor could imagine the itch need they had to shift their positions.

“Hold,” Hrukkr whispered.

A drawn out groan of metal settling sounded from within the ship’s belly. Hands tightened on weapons, and Thor found himself flexing his own fingers. He felt Mjölnir’s magic hum in his heart from where she sat in his chambers. She was on the edge of coming to him.

The groan died with an agonising slowness, stuttering to a halt and leaving the silence in the bridge unbearable. Hrukkr gestured with two fingers, and one of the dwarfs behind him threw a negating disc into the mouth of the main corridor that led to the bridge. The pulse that it sent forth didn’t trip any sort of technology — weapons, armour, nor even the smallest smoke detector — that one of the younger dwarfs lowered his weapon.

The attack came when one of his comrades pulled it back up.

Thor shouted when the creature leapt through the space, shrieking when one of the guards by the door stabbed it through the chest. The thing had an exoskeleton, and the  _crack_  of it breaking was drowned out by the second alien jumping over its dead companion, the heavy fist knocking the dwarf to the floor so it had the time to pull a rifle from its back. It too was killed by the other dwarfs on the bridge, but it hardly mattered in the end. More of the creatures were pouring forth from the corridor, hissing and howling as they attacked.

“Back-up!” Hrukkr bellowed. “We need back-up!”

The first of the dwarfs fell, and Hrukkr’s face twisted into a vicious snarl as he hurled himself into the fight, hatchets raised high and spitting electricity.

Mjölnir smacked into Thor’s hand, and he barely had the time to realised he’d summoned her before Odin shouted, “Lock Valaskjalf down!”

The order was followed by the deep throated blast of Valaskjalf’s war horn, and the doors to the room slammed closed, thick uru bars locking them in. “Ready a legion on Einherjar to deploy,” Odin barked. “Have them stationed by the Observatory and await my command should further action be required.”

“‘Required’?” Thor asked in disbelief. “Nidavellir is under attack! They need aid!”

“They will receive aid when I approve of it,” Odin bit back. “I cannot send our warriors in on impulse.”

Thor grit his teeth. Odin was right, seeing that Asgard’s interference without proper consideration could make the situation worse instead of better. He’d learnt that lesson the hard way.

The pile of dead was growing. More of the causalities were the creatures, but, from a quick head count, three of the dwarfs were dead. Thor could barely stand to watch, knowing that he couldn’t do anything. The drowning helplessness that swamped him only brought back memories of Thrúdr. The Thrúdr after whom he daughter was named, who had died because of his lack of action.

_T-Th … o … or…._

He turned his head away.

“We need the back-up unit!” Hrukkr shouted.

Nidavellir’s ground team had finally responded, and the thick and harsh words of the dwarfish language were too fast for Thor to follow. Hrukkr spat something back as he buried one of his hatchets into an alien’s neck. The creature stumbled away, screaming, and the hatchet was ripped from Hrukkr’s hand.

“Father’s  _bones_ —” he snarled. Four of the dwarfs leapt towards him to defend, and one of them went after Hrukkr’s hatchet. “Leave it!” he snapped.

“Back-up on the way,” someone on the ground said in the Allspeak.

“Finally—” Hrukkr said, but the word was cut off when one of the creatures reached from him. The four-fingered hand had sharp claws upon it, and they cut into Hrukkr’s skin. Hrukkr bellowed in pain, and one of the dwarfs severed the creature’s arm at the elbow in the effort to save Hrukkr. But the blade didn’t cut through the limb completely, and as the creature wailed, it jerked down on Hrukkr’s neck. Thor winced as it broke.

“Retreat!” one of the dwarfs shouted. “Ret—”

Thor could barely stand to watch as the rest of them were killed. There was little the dwarfs could do about it, for the creatures came in a tidal wave. For the fifty or so that had been killed, a hundred now stood in the bridge. A chittering purr went around the room, very much like the language the dwarfs had lifted from the ship’s logs. Thor used the time to  _look_  at them.

He judged that they stood at perhaps seven feet high, and their builds were stocky. Their skin was grey, their chests heavily armoured but their limbs not. Each of them wore a face-plate too, most likely for battle.

“Father,” Thor breathed, “do you recognise anything about them?”

Odin didn’t have time to respond, for the creatures were moving, making a passage for another to step through. The one that came through was shorter than the soldiers, finer boned too, and dressed in sweeping robes of midnight blue. The single piece of armour it wore was a breastplate. Whereas the soldiers each had four fingers to a hand, this one had six. Its face was covered but for the mouth. When it smiled, the teeth were glass-like, needle fine and stained red.

“Yggdrasil,” it said, and Thor winced at the harsh way it said the word in the Allspeak. “You have forgotten us.”

The room was silent.

“You have received the message we beamed,” it continued. “Have you found the answer for it in the scrabble to translate? Blown off the dust of your archives?” Thor jumped as the ear-grating sound of the alien words filled his ears again. At first he thought that the thing had hacked their recording of it, but he realised, with a sliver of relief, it was from its end.

“I’m coming for you,” the creature said in a gravel voice. “I’m coming for you.”

“Destroy the ship,” Thor heard from Nidavellir. “Permission to fire?”

“Aye. Fire.”

The creature never stopped talking as blinding light illuminated the windows to the bridge, and the feed was lost a heartbeat later. Still the words echoed in Thor’s head as the holo-projection faded and Nidavellir shrunk to its usual size upon Yggdrasil’s branches. Still he could see the thing’s unnerving smile behind his eyelids.

“My … my king?” one of the council asked.

It took a huge effort for Thor to lift his eyes to his father. He’d never seen Odin so white. “Norns …,” he whispered.

“Father?”

Odin’s response was a single word. A name:

“Thanos.”


	4. Chapter Three - Útgarðar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm, I know I'm taking longer to update this time around, and seeing as I'm starting Uni again tomorrow, the gaps are only going to get longer. Truth is, I'm not feeling this story so much; I've gotten stuck into an original I find myself writing before remembering I have this one I need to finish too. So yep.

Court had just ended when Loki entered the throne room. The herald barely had the time to announce his presence to those leaving before he marched up the length of the room, dragging Ver by the hair. His hands were bound in front of his chest, his face bloody and bruised. Loki’s faction trod a distance behind him, spreading out to the corners of the room to intermingle amongst those who had cleared the centre way for Loki.

He came to a halt a mere step from the foot of the throne’s dais, and he threw Ver upon the stairs. The impact with them forced the air from Ver’s lungs, and when he tried to crawl away, Loki planted a foot high on his back to keep him in place. All the while, his eyes were upon the throne.

“Sire,” Loki called up. Even after a hundred and ninety-six years, the word felt like acid on his tongue. “Kneeling before you is Lord Ver Bakraufson, strategist to Traitor Hroar Enginnssdóttir.”

High upon the dais, Loki’s father sat shrouded in shadow. He shifted into the soft moonlight from the skylight.

Laufey-King was a daunting figure to behold. His cobalt skin was made of scars, broken up by the darkened, triple heritage lines of the adult high elite. His jagged horns shadowed his face, and were wrapped with iron bands, and his ears were likewise weighed down. The armoured sleeves he always wore were made of star-iron, fitted sleekly to his skin and rippling with spines enough to rattle menacingly with every movement. The fingers ended with uru claws edged with diamond. His _kjilt_ was likewise armoured, the _pteruges_ clinking and scraping against each other. Greaves encased his legs, and over his shoulders was draped a cloak of valravn feathers.

Loki exposed his throat to Laufey as he looked up. He rose from the throne, and the sheer force of his presence reminded Loki just why he still nursed a very real fear in his heart for the king. Fear not just for a king, but fear for a frost giant.

“Loki Laufeyson,” was all Laufey said, and the baritone of his voice filled every corner of the room.

Loki bowed. “A gift for Your Majesty,” he said quietly to the floor. “I trust you will find him useful to the war effort.”

“The rest of you, leave,” Laufey said to the room. “My blood and I will talk alone.”

The jötnar behind them bowed, and everyone, the guards included, filed out. The doors shut with a boom, and Loki shivered when magic crawled over the walls, granting them privacy from any eavesdroppers.

“I hardly expected you of all people to be a zealot for my cause,” Laufey started, standing from his throne. “Imprisoning specific individuals without me expressing any kind of want for them.”

Loki narrowed his eyes as Laufey came down the steps to stand beside him. “I can assure you that you are, in that sense, correct — I am no zealot for you.”

“Then why risk your life to detain him? I did not order the arrest of this man.”

“You know why,” Loki said. He kept his eyes trained on the floor. He had grown since he’d come back to Jötunheimr, and he now stood taller than Laufey by a half foot. But still his body posture spoke of deference. “I am my own zealot. He took someone from me. I want her back.”

“This isn’t about Angrboða Vörnissdóttir still?”

“She is a valuable warrior to my faction,” Loki snapped. “Let me amend myself — I do not want her back; I need her back. This shit,” he said, leaning more of his weight onto Ver with the words, “was the one who commanded the battle in which she was taken. I know he can provide the answers I seek into retaking her. He would have overseen her imprisonment.”

“That is overly optimistic of you,” Laufey said. “Last I checked, it was the prison wardens who oversaw prisoners.”

“Lord Ver Bakraufson takes a great interest in his prisoners, especially those who are valuable. He knows what they can bring him socially. He’d keep them close, close enough that I wouldn’t put it past him to know when each meal is distributed.” He grabbed Ver by the hair and forced his head up. “Isn’t that right, arsefucker?”

“Yes,” Ver whispered.

“There. You see?”

But Laufey only snorted. “Get someone to take him away. You and I will talk in private.”

Loki glowered. “Skaði,” he shouted after a few seconds. When she came back in, he said, “Take Bakraufson away.”

“My prince,” Skaði said, bowing low. She jabbed Ver in the side, hissing, “ _Up_ ” at the same moment. She herded him out at dagger point, and when the door shut again, Laufey rolled his shoulders.

“Loki, you must cease striking out on your lonesome.”

“I’m not alone,” Loki said. “I have my warriors.”

“You know exactly what I mean,” Laufey said, levelling a finger at him. “I assume you’ve heard of _strategy_. When you employ strategy, it wins wars. Strategy is something I’ve noticed you _disregard_ in the name of your own selfish goals. And when you disregard it, it forces me to change my own plans. Remember the incident when you undid _four years’_ worth of planning? The last thing I need is you fucking my war up by being captured or killed by Þrymheimr because of your determination to jam your head as far as possible up your own arse.”

“Sweet of you to be so concerned about my wellbeing, Laufey-King,” Loki growled.

“Aye — your king,” Laufey said. “And the king to whom you have sworn your unfaltering loyalty. So heed my words, boy — you will stop leading these self-organised raids unless I permit you to go. If something goes wrong, then your selfishness will see us lose this war. If you insist on walking this path, know there will come a night in which you fuck up, and you’ll have no back-up, no support, and your stumble will cost us near everything.”

“Glad to know of it,” Loki said, bowing and flourishing a mocking hand.

“If you do this again, I do not care if it is Sigyn who has been captured,” Laufey said, “I will see you punished for treason.”

“Will you?” Loki asked coolly. “That will be the sure fire way to lose the war. Aren’t we supposed to be fighting over me?”

“Perhaps, but I can still dole out corporal punishment. So understand me when I say _do not_ do this again.”

“Yes, Mother,” Loki bit out in Æsir-ian. “But,” he said, changing back to Jötunn, “since you’ve refused to accept my gift of Bakraufson to you, then I claim to breaking him first. I’ll send you the report of the raid as soon as I can. Sire.”

He exposed his throat curtly for a half second before he turned on his heel and stormed away. Although he had known from the second he’d stepped foot into the throne room he’d get into a fight with Laufey, it still irked him. He slapped the back of his neck as soon as he left to rid himself of the feeling of Laufey’s gaze on his shoulders.

 _He’s right_ , Hveðrungr whispered. _Irresponsible brat._

“Shut — up,” Loki growled. He started the climb through the castle to the royal wing, too pissed off to acknowledge the servants who bowed to him.

The castle was a huge building, and from the distance, it looked like a knife thrust into the air. It was made primarily of dark stone, and before the war, would have been a masterpiece of jötunn architecture. Loki had seen sketches of what it had once looked like, and even he was moved to the point of being impressed. It was but a shell of its former self. The outer walls had crumbled over the centuries, and there was a stretch of corridor that was open to the sky near the foot of the castle. The stone lay unevenly on the floor in some places, and Loki had spent the first few years learning the layout of the floors by repeatedly stubbing his toes. He’d been told it was due to the flexing of the thick sheet of ice Útgarðar was built atop. Scattered around the grounds were the remnants of the flying buttresses, walls, ceilings, and paving stones broken by the war.

The royal wing was towards the upper part of the castle. The corridor leading to the wing was populated by at least six guards around the clock, and defensive sigils marked the stone. Their outlines wavered as Loki passed beneath them, but the magic settled when it recognised him.

“Hornbearer,” said Leifi, the leader of the household guard. She stood before the doors to the solar, and her fist clenched, ready to strike if necessary.

Loki gave her a hand signal — two fingers to his palm, thumb crooked, and twice moving his wrist in a circle. Leifi nodded, then stood aside, her fingers unfurling. Loki pushed the doors to the solar open, closing them quickly.

The room beyond was designed to be as open as possible. One of the walls, facing the near-derelict Temple on the opposite side of Útgarðar, was made of clear ice, forming a window. The other walls were either hung with the great hides of slain beasts, or had upon them bas-relief knotwork. Plush furniture was scattered throughout the room, couches and stools and flint tables, silk pillows from Álfheimr, and flameless lamps sitting on side tables.

Sprawled on his stomach on the couch furthest from the door was Loki’s younger brother, Helblindi. He looked up when Loki came in, but soon enough, his eyes wandered back to the book he held in a hand. Like many jötnar, Helblindi had cut his hair, but only when he had been deemed old enough. He’d also allowed for his claws to grow out when that time had come too. He didn’t have his horns yet — they wouldn’t grow for another two centuries — and his heritage lines, like Loki’s, were pearly white, speaking all the more of his childhood.

But Helblindi wasn’t the child Loki had first met two hundred years previously. He had shot up over the past few decades, and now at eight hundred and twelve years, he was fast catching up to both Loki and Býleistr. He was still incredibly skinny, so much so Laufey thought it funny how he wasn’t pushed around by the slightest gust of wind, but Helblindi was adamant he was just going to have the same slight build Loki did. Loki didn’t bother pointing out he’d been even skinnier than Helblindi at that age.

Helblindi’s voice was beginning to deepen too, and Loki was surprised to learn that jötunn vocals chords were even more volatile than those of Æsir boys’ — Helblindi’s voice would go from a highly pitched tone to a distinctly adult growl within the space of a breath. When that happened, thankfully rarely, it left Helblindi spluttering and hacking for several seconds. The range of sound was needed to properly carry over the ice and snow, and such a range of voice was employed by jötnar often when co-ordinating over long distances, whether it be hunting or, more recently, for the war effort.

 _Did your voice do this?_ Helblindi had hoarsely asked several times.

 _No_ , Loki said. It couldn’t have; he had been constrained to his Æsir form throughout his adolescence.

“Where’s Býleistr?” was the first thing Loki asked when he closed the door behind him.

Helblindi shrugged, kicking his legs in the air. “He got back from that scouting expedition at dawn, but I haven’t seen him since eventide. He’s probably in the War Room. Or he’s sleeping.”

“Hmph.” Loki sat down next to Helblindi, tilting the book back so he could see the title. Helblindi made a noise of compliant and tried to punch the crook of Loki’s elbow. “And where’s Fárbauti?”

“Can you go have a bath?” Helblindi asked in return, finally shaking Loki’s hand off. “And I don’t know where Dam is. Go find her yourself.”

“The point, Helblindi, lies in not finding her.” Loki put his feet up on the table, sighing in relief as he started to take his armour off.

“Did you and Sire fight again?” Helblindi asked absently as he flipped a page.

“Pick a day out of the last two centuries when we haven’t fought,” Loki said.

“You weren’t fighting with him yesternight. You weren’t here to have a fight with him. And the night before that, and the one before that, and—”

“Rhetorical question, Helblindi.”

“I know. But I like treading on your toes. Go bathe; you’re offending my nose.” Then Helblindi turned himself around on the couch, putting his feet in Loki’s face and chin on the armrest.

“Norns, your feet offend my nose,” Loki muttered, before he stood up and went to the stairs. They coiled tightly up to the sleeping quarters. These were spaced around an atrium-like area, each of the five doors leading to a complete private complex. One of them was bolted shut, and apparently had been for the last twenty-five thousand years since the ruling couple had last had four children. Loki crossed to the chamber on the immediate right of the master complex where Laufey and Fárbauti slept, opening the door as quietly as he could.

“You look stressed.”

“Not so much stressed,” Loki said, throwing the shoulder plate he’d removed downstairs onto one of the room’s couches. “More so frustrated.”

Sigyn lay on the bed, her clothes changed since their return. Her armour and leathers were gone, replaced by a much more casual _kjilt_ and silken shawl. Her chest was left bare, and as soon as Loki divested himself of his armour, he joined her on the bed.

“You and Laufey-King fought,” she said.

“I know that; Helblindi just told me.”

Sigyn rolled her eyes.

“He wants to shorten my leash,” Loki said after a few seconds. “He’s not happy with the number of unauthorised raids I’m leading.”

 _With reason_ , Hveðrungr purred. If Hveðrungr had a corporeal face to punch, Loki would have done in that moment.

“Will you do anything about Ver tonight?” Sigyn asked.

Loki shook his head, then shimmied down the bed to lay a kiss on her solar plexus. “I’ll let him stew for a while. I’m thinking maybe two nights.” His fist tightened. “But I have to get Ange out …”

“She’s tough, Loki,” Sigyn said, lifting his chin. “When we find her, she’ll be fine.”

Loki sighed, resting his head against her ribs. “Have you ever been tortured, Sig?”

“Have you?”

 _Yes._ “I know some things about it. More than you, I wager.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “So sure, are we?”

“Have you been brushing up on it behind my back?” Loki asked, looking up at her with wide eyes. “Devious woman!”

Sigyn snorted, pushing at his shoulder. “We’re in the middle of a war. You pick up a thing or two.”

“Hmm.” Loki made his way further down her body, grazing his teeth along the edge of her navel. He smirked against her skin when her hips twitched.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Sigyn said a few heartbeats later.

“Question …?” Loki murmured as he lathered at her skin.

“Have you been tortured?”

Loki stopped, a frown pinching his face. “I don’t want to talk about it.” _Because it’s this place._

Sigyn _looked_ at him. Her gaze was utterly unimpressed, and Loki almost bent his will then. When he realised it, he thought about conjuring a lie to placate her, but cursed himself for it a bare second later. He wouldn’t lie to her, he never would, and so he wished with every fibre of his being she’d let the matter go.

“Does it bring up bad memories?” she asked.

Loki took the out. “Aye.”

“Then we shall discuss it no more.” She shifted her weight, and her legs fell apart. Tapping her inner thigh, she said, “That’s permission for you to put your mouth to other uses.”

Loki chuckled. “How demanding of you.” Nevertheless, he was happy to comply.

* * *

#

* * *

The eventide meal was taken in the royal family’s private hall. Loki’s hair was still somewhat stiff with frost from his and Sigyn’s shared bath when they came to the table. As soon as they sat, Loki didn’t hesitate to diving into his meal, taking a bit of everything and putting it on his plate. Whereas the Æsir were omnivores, jötnar were pure carnivores. Before him were cuts of nearly every delectable meat the realm had to offer. Although food had been stretched thin after the Casket’s taking, and stretched further because of the war, the royal family still had enough to fill their stomachs three times over if they so wanted. And for it, Loki had filled out.

Whatever nutrients he hadn’t had enough of in Asgard he had tenfold of here. Before he had come back, he’d been all lithe muscle, little more than skin and bone, but now … he was powerful here. As much as he hated to admit it, no matter how ugly he felt, what Thor’s image was to Asgard he was to Jötunheimr. He was still lean, but well-built with a proper diet, and his fine-boned face was supposedly handsome — many had told him this over the decades, including a pining Hval, but still Loki found it impossible to believe. His gift for shapeshifting was a rare thing to possess, and in theory, his physical attributes, as well as his sharp mind and combative skills, made him a near-perfect embodiment of jötunn ideals.

Býleistr, who was his senior by three centuries, was prime material too. He didn’t look it as he stomped into the hall though. He was bleary-eyed, and his shoulders were curved forward in his exhaustion. He was all muscle, bulky where Loki wasn’t, and was more reminiscent of Laufey than their mother, who Loki took after. Býleistr hadn’t bothered with his glamour either. He was usually careful to employ it with the little magic he had outside the solar, but for now, he was evidently too exhausted to care. When it was in place, it hid the scars that maimed him.

His scars were courtesy of Laufey who had struck out at him at the conclusion of the war, thinking in a moment of blind panic that his son was an enemy. Býleistr would bear the marks of Laufey’s mistake beyond even his death. A long line of pale claw marks, so starkly different now that his heritage lines had darkened they were impossible to miss, cut from his brow to beneath his ribs on his left side, and the eye partially dull with the damage.

“You do know it’s rude to start before everyone’s seated?” Býleistr asked.

“I didn’t ask for a lecture on proper table manners from someone who doesn’t use cutlery,” Loki said in reply, taking a deliberate bite of his meal.

Once, Býleistr would have retorted, but he only sighed and dropped down into his chair.

“Býleistr,” Sigyn said, leaning around Loki so to address him better, “I’ve been looking forward to seeing Grýla again. Is she not coming?”

“Not this dawn,” Býleistr said. “She’s been confined to the medical wing for the day.”

“Why?” Loki asked.

“She had a spike through the foot,” Býleistr said. “Bad one too. Severed a tendon. Menglöð-Heilari’s working on repairing it.”

“So she chased you out?” Loki asked dryly.

“When doesn’t she?”

Loki’s response was a shrug.

“He’s not being a pain, is he?” Býleistr asked Sigyn.

“No more than usual.”

“‘Than usual’?” Loki said, aghast.

Sigyn swatted at him. “Don’t sound so surprised.”

They fell silent when the doors opened a final time, and Laufey came in, followed by the Queen-Consort, Fárbauti. The first thing Loki always noticed about her was how similar they looked. Apart from the occasion trace of Laufey in his features, he and Fárbauti were mirror images. Although she lacked the horns of the royal-born line, she looked regal nevertheless. She wore a mantle of white fur, and a flowing skirt of Vanir silk from before the days of the Asgard-Jötunheimr War. She strode next to Laufey as his equal, and paused only to smile at her sons. Helblindi fell in behind Laufey and Fárbauti, his head still buried in the book.

“By all means, start without us,” Laufey said to Loki, who ignored him.

“My king, my queen,” Sigyn said, inclining her head.

Laufey nodded his acknowledgement.

“Sire, what’s frustrating you?” Býleistr asked.

Laufey grunted. “Traitors,” he said after he piled his plate with food.

“Who?” Býleistr said sharply.

“Lady Kylia Herekajardóttir.”

“Doesn’t she supply livestock from Glæsisvellir’s outer edges?” Loki asked.

“Yes,” Fárbauti said.

“That’ll sting,” Loki muttered. “Have you a replacement for her in mind?”

“There are a few possibilities,” Fárbauti said. “Luckily, her lands are far enough from Þrymheimr that we’re sure not much of the propaganda gets to the area.”

“Then if that’s true, you’ll have to be careful with disposing her.”

“What do you suggest, then?”

“Make it public,” Loki answered. “Make it abundantly clear what she’s done, and in order to appeal to the uneducated masses, use simple language. Get them angry with her, and they’ll be glad to see the back of her.” He shrugged. “Basic psychological manipulation. Turn them against her to the point they’ll be more than happy to dispose of her for you.” He looked at Laufey. “Make them zealots for your cause.”

“Helblindi,” Fárbauti said, cutting the conversation off, “what are you reading?”

Helblindi looked up from the book. “Hrym gave it to me,” he said slowly. “She liked it.”

“She’s _literate_?” Loki asked, surprised.

“I’m teaching her.”

“Helblindi, you know there’s no books allowed at the table,” Fárbauti said. “It’s time for family.”

“Why?” he said, surly. “You’re only talking politics. I don’t know anything about that.”

“You’ll learn more by listening and participating,” Laufey said.

Helblindi made sound of disgust, then a show of closing the book and pushing it away. Loki laughed under his breath.

“You shouldn’t be getting so close to that bastard girl,” Laufey said, ripping off a chunk of his meal from the bone.

“Why?” Helblindi asked again. “She’s not stupid.”

“She’s bastard-born,” Býleistr said in a manner that pronounced the case closed.

Helblindi wasn’t done, though. “ _So?_ She’s my friend.”

“And you’re royal-born,” Býleistr finished. “You’re getting to the age where people are noticing you and what you do. Soiling yourself with the likes of hers won’t do you any favours.”

“We aren’t bothering anyone. And we’re not … sleeping together or anything.”

“Others will draw their own conclusions,” Fárbauti said, a great deal gentler than Býleistr. “Your sire and brother are right — you need to cut her off.”

“But that’s not fair,” Helblindi snarled.

“Life’s not fair,” Laufey said after he swallowed his mouthful. “Do it now, and it’ll be less painful.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I don’t want to do a great deal of things, but yet I must,” Laufey said firmly. “Like fight and win this war. You belong here, with us as befits your station as prince. She belongs with the scullery staff.”

Helblindi lapsed into a sullen silence. “Loki has Sigyn,” he mumbled after half a minute.

“Because Sigyn has earnt her place by me,” Loki said, and offense on Sigyn’s behalf prickled his voice. “And possesses the right bloodlines.”

“But she’s not even highbo—”

“But she’s nobility, and that is enough,” Laufey said. “This is the end of the discussion.”

Loki rubbed Sigyn’s knee as Helblindi gave his food such a glare that, if it were still alive, would have killed it in a moment. Loki glowered at him in turn. He’d corner him later and force an apology from him.

“So, what’s your opinion on the situation with Kylia-Lady?” Býleistr asked Helblindi.

“If she’s been trafficking supplies to Þrymheimr loyalists,” Helblindi said, “then name her for a traitor and kill her.”

“‘Blindi, her lands supply a bulk of our own army,” Býleistr said patiently. “Pursuing that course of action could damage us.”

“Then do what Loki said and strip her lands and titles and pass them to someone loyal.”

“Why?” Laufey asked. “Exercise that mind of yours. Explain it back to me.”

“She … she showed disloyalty, Sire,” Helblindi said slowly, brow furrowing in thought. “But killing her when she’s well liked could make more people switch sides, especially if they deem her punishment too harsh. Sparing her life would cause minimum damage whilst removing her as a problem. It makes you more likeable to both those sworn to you and to some of Hroar’s people because you’re seen as the more merciful. Then we have to punish her physically. Flogging and then imprisonment to enforce what happens to traitors, right …?”

Laufey nodded. “Well done.”

Helblindi gave a small smile.

Against all of Loki’s expectations, the subject of Ver wasn’t brought up, not even in passing. He wasn’t one to complain about it, but nevertheless, it was a relief to leave.

* * *

#

* * *

Loki chose to wait two nights until he confronted Ver. He spent the time until then preparing what he was going to ask, and how to extract the necessary information from him. Torture was a messy art, one that could go dangerously wrong. Victims tended to say anything in order for the pain to stop, and whatever was said wasn’t reliable. It was Loki’s job to muddle out what was the truth, and what was the nonsense Ver would slur.

He also gave his opinions about the tactics Laufey was employing in the war. Although Loki didn’t rub along with his blood family, he was committed to the war. The table in Útgarðar-Greater’s War Room was huge compared to the one in Asgard. It was a three-dimensional thing too, carved into the shape of the continent Fyrstamsálfu. Its five territories — Útgarðar in the centre, Gastropnir to its south and Glæsisvellir the north, Þrymheimr to the west, and separated by the spine of the Skógarmaðrfit — were marked out and their names painted in a careful hand. Spires marked where the greater cities, the territories’ capitals, were.

The front lines were tussling along the eastern borders of the Skógarmaðrfit, and clear, deep blue triangles of ice marked Laufey’s positions. Hroar’s were represented by carved flint cones. Fronts has been established along Gastropnir’s borders too, and Loki’s eyes were drawn at once to the battlefield where Angrboða had been taken. If the information he’d received from the spies was correct, she resided in a castle deep within the Brjöldustadur, a coastal territory held by Hroar’s supporters. It had been from there Ver had been travelling after being summoned to Þrymheimr.

When the meeting adjourned, Loki made his way to the bowels of the castle.

He had become so familiar with the route to the dungeons over the war’s decades he could have trodden the path in his sleep. It was deep beneath the earth, not so deep as the burial chambers, but beneath the hot springs anyhow. The corridor became narrow and snaked its way through the ice, discouraging any potential breakouts to be able to gather enough steam to be a problem. Murder holes had been carved into the corridor too.

At the end was an iron grid, into which a gate had been cut. The guards on duty took his password without complaint, and when they opened the gate, Loki was joined by the warden. He prowled along the row of cells, reflected a hundred thousand times by cells that were fronted by thick ice. The ice allowed only the faintest of shapes to show through, and Loki didn’t pay much attention to the movement behind.

He pulled up in the middle of the corridor, gesturing for the warden to remove the ice covering the cell he faced.

“When did you last feed him?” Loki asked as the warden placed his palm on the ice.

“Yesternight, Hornbearer.”

“Good.” He didn’t need sick on him.

The ice fell away, and Loki barely flicked an eye when Ver snarled at him. Loki cocked his head to the side, scrutinising him. The jötunn stood in the middle of the cell, wrists chained together and arms pulled high above his head, ankles likewise bound to an anchor; his toes barely brushed the floor. Loki lifted his lip in approval. Skaði hadn’t skimped on anything.

“You may leave us, Warden,” Loki said, not looking away from Ver.

“Hornbearer, do you think it wise—?”

“I’ll call when I’m done.”

“Very well, Hornbearer. I await your call.”

“Best busy yourself, Warden,” Ver sneered. “You will not be needed for a long while.”

When the warden had left them, Loki said, “Your answer suggests that you’ll eventually break.”

“Nay,” Ver said. “I will endure; you will leave with nothing but your frustration.”

“If it makes you feel better to say that, then so be it.” Loki paused. “But know that I am an excellent student, and I have paid diligent attention to jötunn biology.”

“Why the interest?” Ver asked. “Needed the books to figure out how to pleasure your mate in bed?”

Loki refused to take the bait, to acknowledge it at all. “I doubt you’d find anyone else who hates the jötnar as I do. Better understanding of the biology of the enemy means I know a thousand and one ways to hurt you without bringing your death.”

He strode forward and grasped the chains above Ver’s wrists. He was taller than Ver, and so it was little trouble for him to lift the jötunn clear of the ground. If he had to play the intimidation game, then so be it. He’d dressed for it, anyhow, in battle-scarred armour and bands of iron spikes bound around his horns. “I am not a nice person,” he said, grabbing Ver’s throat with his other hand to keep the jötunn from biting him. “I am a sadist, and you must understand that does not come from a place in my past. It is simply who I am, and whom I would have been no matter where I was raised, understand me?”

Ver said nothing, so Loki kneed him hard in the stomach. Ver gasped at the impact, and Loki said in the same calm tone, “Do you understand, you soft thing?”

“Understand that I am not soft,” Ver coughed.

Loki only just kept himself from laughing. Ver wasn’t even a foot soldier, wasn’t used to pain and hardship being so close to Thrymr; the aftereffects from the war that had left the common people starving and riddled with sickness wouldn’t have touched him. Blindness to privilege was its own kind of rot. Loki had been struck by it in Asgard. He wouldn’t let it bite him again.

“Well, one of us will be proved right come the dawn,” Loki said. He clamped a hand over Ver’s mouth, ice growing over the jötunn’s jaw and wedging it shut. The gag’s purpose wasn’t entirely to spare Loki the screams, but was its own form of torture. The inability to articulate was a surprisingly effective way to break someone.

“Now,” Loki said, still close to Ver, “let’s see how much you scream when I press onto _here_.” He jabbed at a spot behind the bone of Ver’s jaw. The reaction was instant — Ver bucked in his restraint, throat working as he fought down a shout. “Did you know this pressure point’s only found in the jötunn and a race of goblin off-shoots that live in Svartálfheimr’s bone hills? Do you want to see what’ll happen if I dig a knife into it?”

Ver glared at him, as if daring him to try. Loki barely held back a snort of amusement. Typical for those not used to pain.

“Know that you can stop this any time,” Loki told him. “But nothing comes free in life. In exchange for me stopping this torture, I want you to tell me where I may find the Lady Angrboða Vörnissdóttir, and every piece of security I must thwart to bring her and myself out alive.”


	5. Chapter Four - Hroar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since Uni's finally finished and [this is what's happening outside](https://twitter.com/hashtag/SydneyStorm), I thought it would be a good time to finish the chapter.

Below her, the crowds howled.

“Hail, Laufey-King!” the commentator bellowed. “Hail, his sons.”

The clank of the portcullis’ chains could be heard over the sounds of the crowd, but they too were drowned when her prisoners were pushed into the arena. There were four of them, all highborn males of the same family line — a sire and his three sons — and all of them were broken. The oldest two had arms in which the bones were obviously shattered. They huddled together, bloody wrecks and visibly trembling.

But the most noticeable thing about them was that all of them had a pair of káshta tusks secured to their heads. The youngest, no more than a boy of a millennium, had had his ears shorn to make adequate space for the bone. The blood, dried a deep blue, ran down both sides of his neck. But it was not he that drew the eye the most — it was one of the sons. His skin had been painted white, and, upon his back, two runes were carved — _Æsir_. They still bled sluggishly.

But whilst the crowds of Þrymheimr howled and jeered, Hroar-Queen merely looked. When she turned her eyes upon the prisoners, she thought nothing of them, felt nothing for them. Her fingers curled on the arms of her seat. No matter how much they were made-up to look like Laufey and his Oblivion-be-damned offspring, she couldn’t see them in the wretches in the arena. She wanted the real thing so desperately it made her very bones itch for it.

“Behold those that have driven the realm into nothing,” the commentator said over the crowds, and hush fell as so to hear him better. “A king who lost _hólmganga_ against Odin One-Eye, a blind and crippled son, a child, and an Asgardian princeling.”

The boy below sobbed as a roar of noise swelled through the arena, and, in his box, the commentator held up a palm for silence. “Oblivion knows how we have suffered under them,” he said in such a low voice many leant forward in their seats so to better hear him. “How many have died for Laufey-King’s weakness? How many lost, mad? How many nights have we watched our realm die for his mistakes? So, brothers mine, sisters mine — let us make our displeasure known.”

The commentator looked to her, and Hroar lifted a finger.

The chains of the portcullis’ groaned again, and an animal bellow filled the arena. Cheers erupted as the svell-dýr clawed its way onto the arena’s floor, spitting and snarling in its starved bloodlust. The spiked tail cut deep gouges in the floor and walls, and it tossed its head, showing its tusks and teeth and tearing at the hard-packed ice with its claws. Laufey’s people pressed their backs together, ice growing within their hands. Hroar didn’t miss how, when the oldest lifted his arm, it shook.

The svell-dýr sized the group up, hitting its tail again and again upon the ground. Then, it charged.

The crowds snarled in their disappointment when the sire fended the animal off on its first charge, then again on its second. He moved in front of his children, protecting the youngest especially, and so when the svell-dýr ran at them a third time, it changed tactic. It swiped out at the eldest son, and he was taken back by surprise, falling into the Æsir painted brother. They got back to their feet, blood pouring from a cut above the eldest’s eye. Hroar saw her King-Consort Thrymr smile savagely from the corner of her eye. She herself merely rested her chin on her fist and continued to watch idly.

It went on for a time — the svell-dýr lunging for the traitors, and they fighting it off. But they were tiring, slowly but surely, and so it was merely a matter of waiting for a mistake.

The sire was the first to die. The svell-dýr had batted the eldest children to the side and lunged for the youngest. The sire leapt over him, and the svell-dýr’s teeth sunk into his back. The crowd roared, and the commentator shouted, “Laufey-Traitor has fallen!”

The youngest screamed, and his hands flew to his chest as the bond between him and his sire broke. It was agony, and Hroar dimly remembered when her own parents had died. Her sire had hurt the most, and her dam, whilst not as painful, had still left her curled over and whimpering as her blood rolled off her teeth. The taste of it came to her at the thought, and she swallowed, disgruntled.

The fight was over quickly after that. The svell-dýr tore the youngest next, and the other two, staggering before, fell to their knees. They were easy targets for the svell-dýr after that, and it left Hroar wondering, not for the first time, why the bond had developed, what evolutionary advantage it brought. It was more a liability than a help.

“Hmm.” Hroar stood, and those surrounding her — attendants, admirers, guards, and the lesser ranking servants — rose too. She left the common people and her fool of a mate to their entertainment, winding her ways through the back halls and up towards the castle proper.

The arena was deep beneath the castle, too deep to allow significant advantage to anyone who dared attacked Þrymheimr-Greater’s fortress, and so it was several minutes later that they emerged.

The main hall was bathed in silver moonslight fractals cast from the clear ceiling at the top of the main stairwell. When it bounced off the ice, it lit the hall to the point where many were nearly blinded. Hroar narrowed her eyes as she swept through the space, waving at the same moment for the shutters to be drawn over the expanse of the roof. The space grew dimmer within a few seconds.

“My queen!”

Hroar looked around as the guards stopped a messenger in front of her, and he bent over, panting. He seemed unfazed by the spears held before him and said, “My queen, there is new from the Skógarmaðrfit.”

“What news?” she asked, motioning for the guards to relax.

“News from Jerkarnar-Lord, Majesty,” the messenger said. “It’s urgent.”

“By your admission or the messenger’s?”

“Both, my queen.” The messenger winced. Hroar took it to be bad.

“Where is this messenger?”

“Waiting on your pleasure for an audience.”

“Send them to throne room. I’ll receive them now.”

The metallic smell of the fighting pits hung about her as she sat on her throne. It was a grand thing, overbearing and intimidating to look upon, and sitting in it gave the impression of her cupped in the claws of a beast. It was swathed with furs and cushions, and could have sat two side-by-side. Hroar sprawled over it, and waved for the doors to be opened.

The hinges groaned, and the man who came forth walked in a hunched fashion. He was flanked by two of the castle’s guards, and held in his arms a sack made of hide. Hroar adjusted one of the furs beneath her, casting a look at the man as he came to a stop before the throne.

 _Bastard born_ , she thought as he placed the sack down and prostrated himself upon the floor.

“Her Majesty Hroar-Queen, Queen of the First Continent, Queen of the Icen Children and the Hoarfrost, Iron Crowned and Higher-Blessed, Fourth-Touched, and First Warrior of the Unbound Clans,” the herald announced.

“My gracious queen,” the bastard murmured. “My First Warrior.” It was the title belonging to the Skógamaðrfit, and one she had taken for herself during her exile. She hated it; it put her amongst the filth.

“And you are, bastard?” she asked, scraping her claws along the arms of the throne.

“Grothr, my queen,” the bastard said to her feet. “I come from Jerkarnar-Lord, Sixth Warrior of the Skógarmaðrfit.”

Hroar drawled, “And what _urgent_ news does Jerkarnar have to tell me?” From the way the bastard shook, it must have been something bad. She found herself tensing.

“Ver-Lord of Ísvillir of Gastropnir has been captured by Útgarðar.”

Hroar didn’t recognise the name. She barely tamped down her annoyance, but some of it must have bled out, for Grothr flinched. “ _Who?_ ” she asked.

“He commanded the Battle of Hreth last year,” Grothr said in a small voice.

Hreth had proved an immense victory. And now it had been said, Hroar found that the name did sound familiar … “So he has been captured? This should concern me why?”

Grothr’s tongue caught in his throat. “T-t-the raid that took him, my most gracious queen … it … it was commanded by the Asgardian.”

Hroar snapped to attention, sitting forward in the throne and bellowing, “He was in the _heart_ of the Skógarmaðrfit? How many were with him?”

“I do not know, I do not know,” Grothr gabbled. “None of us do. We saw him, Majesty. In the fog. It was him, and he threw at us this.” He up-ended the sack, and Hroar was only mutely surprised to see a head; it rolled and slipped on the icy floor. She guessed it to belong to the commander of Ver’s party. She forced herself to sit back, and her anger through the sharp clacking of her claws on the throne’s arm.

“He snuck past all your spies, all your pitfalls,” she ground out. “And you have nothing to show he was there except a _head_?”

“Majesty,” the bastard pleaded, “forgive us.”

Hroar ground her teeth. “Take him away,” she snapped at the guards, throwing herself back in her seat and flicking her hand. “If he is so blind, then he is not in need of his eyes. Then escort him back to his clan.”

“My queen!” Grothr howled. “ _Please!_ I am but the messenger!”

 _You’re within my reach_ , she thought, but did not say. She dared not think that she had a court free of people loyal to Laufey, and any excuse of pettiness they could find within her, they could turn to their advantage and so inspire treason. They would speak of her with fear though, and fear inspired its own kind of loyalty. It was one of the few things she and her dam had agreed upon: one could not rule without a touch of fear.

When the bastard-born had been dragged away, she said to the rest of the room, “Leave.”

Her entourage did so, and the guards too when she snarled at them. When the last of their footsteps had faded, only then did she call out, “Glapsviðr.”

There was a scuffling from behind the throne as a runt shuffled forward. He was far smaller than any of the other people that had been there, being some inches shy of six feet in height. He was wrapped in furs, and he was shivering violently despite them; he also wore a cloak of ragged black feathers, and bore no heritage lines. Scars ripped his face, great, deep claw marks surrounding his ruined eye. Hroar had lost her flickers of amusement when she beheld his stunted height, and her lip curled as the old, bastard runt came to the foot of her throne.

“Yes, Your Majesty?”

“Tell me,” Hroar said, “what have your runes told you tonight? You have been casting them.”

“They speak of victory,” Glapsviðr murmured. “Great victory.”

Hroar hissed. “I want to hear of something other than victory, runtling _goði_ ,” she said. “Tell me how this victory will come about.”

“Forgive me, Your Majesty,” Glapsviðr said hoarsely. “The runes … they show only what they are willing. I have sacrificed—”

“I do not recall asking you what you have sacrificed,” Hroar snapped. “I asked for results, and I don’t care if this _seiðr_ will kill you. I do not want predictions or promises gained from half-seen prophecies; I want assurances.”

“I shall redouble my efforts, Your Majesty.”

“I want more than redoubled efforts,” Hroar said. “I will drive you into the ground if I so please. You will exceed your greatest extents and give me what I want, and only then will I be satisfied.”

“Of course, Your Majesty.”

“Good. Now, tell me: have they said anything of the Odinson?”

“Nothing, my queen. They have been silent.”

“I should put out your other eye too,” Hroar said to him. “Most nights now, I do not know who is the more useless. I have a war to win, people to care for, and I cannot do so with the lack of information I have at hand. So, _goði_ , go and crouch over your runes, and if so needed, pull the answers to my questions from them screaming. I want them, and I want them by the dawn.”

“Majesty … they do not work as such—”

“Then find a way to make it work,” she said. “If you test my patience, you test my protection.” She leaned forward, pleased when he tried to hide how he shrunk back. “Who stood over you in the Skógarmaðrfit for all those decades?”

“Y… You, Majesty.”

“Who fended for you, fed you, ran off those who would have killed you for petty sport?”

“My queen did.”

“Aye, I did. So pay your debt to me.”

“Yes, Majesty. Excuse me.”

She watched him languidly as he slunk down the hall, his feet scuffling the floor and feather cloak making a queer, fluttering rattle. She rose when he had vanished through the doors, tired of the room. The Odinson, and so close to her borders. She ground her teeth and felt like putting her fist through something. She considered for a heartbeat tearing the throne to ruins, but reined the urge in. Lashing out with her instincts had gotten her into this position in the first place — killing her dam hadn’t been one of her finer thought of plans, nor outing herself as the perpetrator to Útgarðar’s full court a millennia and a half ago. Hate and frustration thrummed through her, and a tic started in her fingers.

“Bah,” she spat under her breath.

Hroar swept out of the throne room, sick of the place. Her guards snapped into place when she started the climb towards the solar, eager to get there and to the spy reports that awaited her.

It was always interesting to hear what they said about the Odinson. The sketches they provided of his life and his incurable Asgardian ways. He still swore by their Norns, still said _days_ before hastily correcting himself to _nights_ when he noticed the slips, still treated females his inferiors even by sheer accident. Hopeless, really, and Hroar bathed in his failures. Used every single one of them to whip the people, and herself if she was feeling nice enough to be honest to her heart, into a frenzy.

It made hating Laufey easier, certainly. Her brother, the brother many still looked at starry-eyed because of his war of conquest against the planet and the near mass extinction of the other jötunn species that had taken place as a result. Her brother, who harboured, _loved_ , an Asgardian brat. Who sat on his arse and did nothing about the Casket whilst the very planet fell to ruin beneath their feet. Laufey-Usurper, Laufey the Unfit, Laufey-Weakheart … Oblivion, she hated him. For destroying her to gain everything he had — a mate he loved, the spawn that had come with it, a real crown of _bone_. She cringed at the last thought, touching her fingers to her own metal horns.

She remembered the first time a traitor family had been sentenced to death within the fighting pit whilst mocked-up to be her brother and his offspring and mate. They had used metal horns, hammered into the skull. She had killed the mastermind of that plan, had slaughtered the family before they had the chance to step foot on the arena floor. Despite everything she had done to earn her dignity as queen back — remaking her horns, restoring her heritage lines to the greater and grander four-sweep they were now — it wasn’t enough to gain back what she had lost because of her dam and her brother.

Hroar No-one’s daughter’s heart was a ball of hatred and sharp thorns, and she was convinced that was all it would ever be.

The guards opened the solar doors for her, and she did her best to smile when she was greeted by a litany of “Dam! _Dam!_ ”

“Gróa,” she sighed, pulling her child into her arms as she came across the room. She held her tightly, kissing the top of her head as she asked, “What is it?”

“Buseyra,” Gróa said, her nose wrinkling. “Why did I have to stay here with him? Why couldn’t I go with you to the pits?”

 _Because you threw up the last time, weak girl._ Hroar wouldn’t have Gróa there until she could hold her stomach.

“Does your brother annoy you?” Hroar asked.

Gróa huffed, crossing her arms. “He’s spoilt,” she grumbled. “I gave him to Alathré.” Then she straightened up and pushed her chin out. “Why couldn’t I go to the fighting pits? Thrymr went.”

“Thrymr-Lord,” she said, putting emphasis on his title, “may do as he please.”

“He’s a coward,” Gróa insisted. “I’m not.”

“You are a child,” Hroar said, ending the conversation. “Go to your chambers; I have work to do.”

Gróa glared at her, her lower lip put out in a pout. Hroar thought she would have to command her to leave again, but the girl turned on her heel and left; her foul mood rolled from her person.

The reports for the night were brought to the solar, and she thumbed through the bag of _skilaboðjenda_ , interested in only one. When she found it — an emerald within the rubies — she slotted it into the projection piece and placed it on the desk.

Like all the reports she received, there was no image to accompany the message, and the voice of the recorder had been altered so to hide their identity — Oblivion knew how much she’d be set back if raw reports with pictures and voices intact were intercepted, and her spies therefore compromised.

“ _Dearest Steðvia-Aunt_ ,” the message first said, “ _I hope this war does not bring you the harm it has brought those whom I have been fighting alongside_.”

Hroar took the words in stride. The spies were given new codes every other night, and Steðvia-Aunt meant all was well, nothing had been compromised.

“ _I worry for Los — he has grown more reckless by the day, and I fear that he thinks about defecting._ ”

Hroar hummed to herself. _Los_ referred to the Odinson, and he was fighting against Laufey’s control.

“ _I found him some nights ago with a bag of morasha nuts, enough to sustain him for a five hundred league journey. I grow anxious about his greed for food if his sights are set on reaching Gellanth, as I suspect they are._ ”

Morasha nuts referred to warriors, and five hundred leagues meant five thousand heads. Gellanth was where the royal family was sending them. Hroar noted it down.

“ _Los has not been himself, aunt. He fights with his brothers, his parents, and I do not know what to do.”_

The report went on for another few minutes, Hroar jotting down the details. When the emerald had run its course, she set it inside the projector piece on the table and wiped the stone. The colour faded, and she shook it out onto the disposal tray. The rest of the bag sat waiting for her, and Hroar cast it a glance, narrowing her eyes. At eventide. She was exhausted, furious with the news of the Odinson.

She sent the information to her council and retired to her chambers, locking the doors behind her. She had little wish to entertain with Thrymr that dawn, and barely stirred when he scratched at the door some time later. She only fell asleep when she heard him lumber off to find another bed.

* * *

#

* * *

Hroar was woken in the middle of the day by Thrymr.

“Queen,” he whispered as Hroar stormed to the door. “Urgent news.”

_More of it?_

She slid the bolt back, and Thrymr flinched when she drew the door open. He’d rotted within over the years. The first few decades, he’d stood up to her, challenging her to hólmganga not once but twice. With each successive beating though, she’d broken him to her all the more. A part of her was disappointed by the loss, because even though he was easier to mould, she hardly wanted someone without self-agency.

He stepped aside and lowered his head as she stormed to the end of the corridor where a servant waited, hovering by the wall. She dipped her head as Hroar stepped past the guards at the corridor’s mouth, standing in front of the girl with her arms folded. “What urgent news?” she asked, clipped.

“Your council, my queen, they await you.”

“Go.”

The girl nodded, bowed again, and left. Hroar strode in the opposite direction to which the servant had taken, fighting a yawn. The council chambers weren’t far from her rooms, and she straightened her shoulders before she entered, casting her gaze around to the ten lords and ladies that made up the council. Thrymr sidled in behind her as she asked, “What urgent news is this?”

“It concerns Ofoti-Lord and the governance of the Horn.”

The Horn was a crucial piece of land straddling the south end of the Skógarmaðrfit. It boasted rich fishing grounds, and before the war, it had been the lifeblood of many along the southern coasts. It still was, but the seas had yielded less since the Asgard-Jötunheimr War’s end. Hroar had secured the allegiance of the ruling lord of the Horn upon the start of this newest war, but troubling rumours had started to come out of the Horn three years back. Talk of catch being smuggled into Útgarðar’s hands had floated back to Þrymheimr-Greater, and so Hroar braced herself for the worst.

“A ship was intercepted just after dawn, and the cargo contained a near six thousand stone of unregistered catch,” Ryg-Lord, her spymaster, said. “My people questioned the captain.”

“A pirate?”

“No, my queen. He claimed to be loyal to Ofoti, and to have had orders from him to make port in Gastropnir and for the food to be transported to Gastropnir-Greater.”

“And have you found evidence that he was lying?”

“None, my queen. In fact …” Ryg lowered his tone, and Hroar didn’t miss how his shoulders bunched. “My queen … a seal was found in his cabin. Ofoti’s seal.”

Ryg barely had the time to finish before Hroar howled. The Horn provided a near third of her people’s food, and if Ofoti’s loyalty was lost, if he was slowly siphoning his supplies to Gastropnir, and therefore to her brother’s armies …

“How many soldiers do we have in the capital?” she asked Eimgeitir-Lord, one of the generals.

He straightened his back. “Three and a half thousand soldiers,” he said. “Four hundred warriors.”

“Just under four thousand,” Hroar muttered. “Ryg, what are Ofoti’s numbers?”

“Two thousand at most,” he replied.

“I want accurate figures; I’m marching to the Horn,” Hroar snarled, “and putting Ofoti-Traitor’s head on a _spike_.” She slammed her fist into the table top, and behind her, Thrymr jumped. The other council members seemed to recoil from her too, but she was working herself up into too much of a rage to care. Without a steady supply of food, her people would starve. Worse, if they found out that Útgarðar had food, one of the things the people had been scrambling for over a millennium, then they had a higher chance of defecting. For in the end, a person was only willing to commit so much loyalty to a lost-looking cause.

The Horn was too important a piece to lose.

The door opened, and again, many startled; there had been no announcement, not even a knock. At first, Hroar thought the door had opened of its own accord, then her gaze dropped to Glapsviðr standing on threshold. He looked a child, and the atmosphere in the room changed at once, fear turning to disgust. Many held the opinion it was best for runts to be left to die at birth, for Jötunheimr was a cruel place, and with the Asgard-Jötunheimr War lost, it was even more difficult to survive. Only useful mouths were kept fed — the children who would grow into able workers and fighters. The runt was neither.

“Glapsviðr-Runtling,” Hroar drawled. “What are you doing here?”

“I … I have done as you asked, my queen,” he said, and his voice was even hoarser. “And I come to give advice.”

Hroar arched a brow. It wasn’t the first time he’d learnt of a situation barely after she and her council had heard of it, but he’d never come with advice.

Hroar turned to him, the chainmail on her _kjilt_ clinking with the movement. “What advice?”

“You plan to lead an assault on the Horn,” Glapsviðr said simply.

“And why would Her Most Gracious Majesty want advice from such a twisted and deformed thing as you?”

Glapsviðr turned his gaze on the speaker, whole and hollow socket both seeming to drill into the lady. It was enough to make her look away. “Because,” Glapsviðr said, “I am far more valuable, and far wiser and thirstier for Laufey and his blood than any of you here. Because I have nothing more left to lose.”

Hroar lifted her chin and crossed her arms. She knew what the runt wanted, and he knew what she really wanted from him.

“Out,” she said.

No one moved at first, and irritation tickled her. “I said: out, my lords and ladies.”

Rifingafla-Lady stammered, “M-my queen?”

“If I must ask a third time,” Hroar snarled, “I’ll see heads roll.”

The council chamber was emptied quickly after that, and the guards sent away. Glapsviðr stood still in the doorway, leaning on his staff and looking surprisingly intimidating for such a small figure. His single eye gleamed, and he said, “I have done as my queen commands. I have consulted the runes, teased answers from them.” He pushed up a sleeve and held his forearm out for her inspection. Burns stood livid on the skin, and the cuts underlying them seeped with blood and clear fluid. Hroar motioned for him to cover his arm; the sight was disturbing. But as he had explained time and time again, the magic he used thrived on the suffering of the user. Answers to difficult questions were difficult to obtain. Sometimes, they took nights to grasp, most times they demanded the user to walk the line of near death.

Glapsviðr’s step was shakier than usual as he came further into the room, the heavy doors closing behind him without provocation. His fingers shook as he neared the table. “I’ve done as you asked.”

“And what have you to tell me?”

He flicked a finger towards the sky. “The moons stand full in the skies this day. They offer power when both full. For the rarity, their united power has offered me the glimpse of a vision, my queen. Of events yet to pass.”

Hroar’s eyebrows rose. “You have seen beyond Infinity?”

“I have, my queen.”

Hroar chuckled. “Heretic.”

“If my queen commands me to be one, then one I shall be.”

Glimpsing into the future was a blasphemous art, for it derided the concept of Infinity — free will. To see the future locked it in stone, it was believed.

“And so what would you have me do about the Horn?”

“Not worry,” Glapsviðr said. “I cannot see what will happen there, but it will benefit you.”

“If I wanted vague words,” she said, her voice clipped, “then I would have kept those fools here.”

“Do not think them fools, my queen. To think them fools when they are not will only place you in a position of weakness.”

“Do not presume to _lecture_ me.”

Glapsviðr bent his neck. “Forgive me, my queen.”

“And is that all you have to tell me?” she asked.

“There is more. I have seen further. To the end of the war.”

Hroar paused, tasted ash in her mouth. “You have?”

“Aye.”

“And do I wish to know what it was you saw?” Immediately, she wished she hadn’t asked. There was a reason many spat at those who wished to glimpse into the future. The torment of knowing what was to come that would eat at a person, great or despicable, would eat one alive.

Glapsviðr said, “Horns will be broken, my queen,” and smiled. “And you will be the one to break them.”


	6. UPDATE

Hi everyone,

Firstly, I'm sure you can tell now that this isn't a new chapter, and that because I'm writing this here instead of on Tumblr or something that this isn't really good news for the life of the story. And it's not, I'm sorry to say. I want to explain the reasons for me putting this on hiatus in the first place before going into the reasoning as to why this is now on permanent hiatus/discontinued.

  1. I didn't give myself enough time to take a break before launching into this second part. Chapter One was 100% an impulse post on my part, and so it's my fault. Or perhaps I gave myself too much time and I should have gotten into Part Two right after I finished the first part to keep the ball rolling.
  2. I was drifting away from the fandom. I wasn't enthused about Marvel any longer, and that started back in May 2015 when _Age of Ultron_ came around and seemingly everywhere I turned on the Internet was villainising Joss Whedon as much as they could for every tiny mistake/oversight he made when making that film, from casting to directing problems to the other numerous things that happened, some of which were out of his hands. I knew that the Marvel fandom had its ugly sides -- everything has its ugly sides, show me something that doesn't -- but it was that witch-hunt which turned me off completely. I hate call-out culture. I hate it more than I can articulate. The lack of empathy for another human being and people going after him not to correct his mistakes nor to educate others as to where he went wrong, but for brownie points from peers and to feel good about doing their part to show they weren't horrible people, made me throw in the towel. In my opinion, screaming at people en-masse or just as a single voice to feel an endorphin rush is equally as horrible; even now two, nearly three years later I'm still disgusted. When you do such a thing solely to derive pleasure from it, that's not social justice, it's mob mentality and it's one of the most awful things someone can experience when people are tearing you down for not doing something to their specifications and then hi-fiving themselves for it. I unfollowed a lot of people to get away from it, and as such my dash became a ghost town (to this day I only follow 19 people). When I'm in a fandom I'm one of those people who needs a constant stream of things to talk about to keep me intensely interested in it, so that combined with the fact that AoU wasn't as stellar a movie as we'd hyped it up to be, I lost interest. The lack of Thor stuff in 2016 again didn't help.
  3. I dug up something from the back of the cupboard: the old Xbox 360. I got back into gaming again and fell pretty hard for it (namely _Assassin's Creed_ , which is my new drug), which snatched my interests away from Marvel even more.
  4. By June 2016, I had written almost 400,000 words for Marvel, or almost the size of _A Dance With Dragons_ , combining the numbers on this account and my other. I was exhausted. I still am exhausted.
  5. I was becoming much more aware of the Marvel "good movie" formula and was tired of it. All the stories were the same, all the characters the same. I wanted something new.



I want to make clear that I am still relatively proud of the first book, but that pride is first and foremost for the worldbuilding and characters. Even so if I could go back and take an axe to some parts of it, I would, and big things at that (e.g. bonds, the  _kyn_ , parts of the Nóttvisa, etc). If I had the time and patience to sit down and edit the damn thing as much as I'd like to, well, maybe I'd start to be more happy with it. I've improved enough with my writing that there are huge, huge swathes of the first part that I'm deeply unhappy with, and I'm one of those people that can't leave things alone when I'm not happy with them. If I had this just sitting on my harddrive and it was a 100% original work, I'd certainly edit the crap out of it until I was happy, but I feel like I can't here. It's on the Internet, it's not one of my babies, I don't have enough care for it to fix what's wrong.

The crux of the problem with me not editing or continuing this part is that I'm so deeply unhappy with the first part I've lost so much interest. The only way I could be happy with it again is to delete the story and post a shiny new version with major reworks.

I've also got new things in my life which means that I don't have the time for fixing  _Jötunheimr_. My focus has shifted to other fandoms for one, and I've started doing other things like tabling at cons, writing my shoddy attempt at a real book, and finishing up my studies as well as internships and such that I just don't have the time. Why focus on something I'm not happy with when there are things which I'm doing now which will help me in the future?

And so: This is on permanent hiatus. If someone wants to finish this, I'll be more than happy to give you my notes, or you can just do your own thing. I'll also be happy to post a summary of plot points in the future if wanted. I don't have the energy, enthusiasm, or patience to finish this story as I'd originally planned, which was ambitious to begin with. If it's worth something: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just can't. Even with the release of _Ragnarok_ I can't find the energy to get back into this. I tried though, the document has been sitting open on my computer for weeks now and I've only lost words instead of adding them.

I'm so fucking sorry you've no idea.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the story. I just needed to write this instead of letting this story die in silence. If you want to keep following me for news on future projects: [Instagram](https://instagram.com/aylitheart/), [Twitter](https://twitter.com/englishybutter), [Tumblr](https://aylitheart.tumblr.com).

\--aylithe


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